


In Enemy Territory

by NevillesGran



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide Spark Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9152164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Once, Mechanicsburg was the seat of villainy in Europa, defied only - but nearly successfully - by Andronicus Valois and the Alliance of the West. Now, a Smoke Knight so incompetent she flunked out of the job she'd spent most of her life training for, is bored out of her mind.Or: Violetta's non-adventures in Mechanicsburg.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Para](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Para/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Para and the whole fandom! I love you guys, seriously. You make my days brighter.

Violetta dashed along the walls of three consecutive tunnel forks, shimmied down one ladder and up another, somersaulted a particularly gross-smelling pool, twisted through a hatch in the wall, leapt off one last platform to cross the stream of muck at her feet, and cursed as she stuck the landing, her hands so far off-mark that the flip turned into a roll and any trainee with a butter knife could have gored her before she was on her feet again. And she _nearly_ fell into the sewer water. No wonder they’d sent her here.

She still hadn’t found an outlet to the river higher than Seventh Street, either. She sighed. Another evening wasted.

it wasn’t that she cared about this particular quest, or even needed to. It wasn’t an assignment. She barely _had_ an assignment—spy and report, and sit around and do nothing. But there was something weird about Mechanicsburg. It had too much power.

That is, the town shone at night (while she was down here in the sewers.) The tourist bars were a bustle of light and noise, the Great Hospital was literally a beacon for incoming ships _and_ had God only knew how many bizarre medical machines running at all times, and even though the city was only a few miles south of Sturmhalten (and many more east), it was warm in almost every building, even now in the dead of winter.

Well, so was Sturmhalten, but only since Tarvek spent that awful week-and-a-half running around in a furious fugue and rewiring every inch of it, just so _his_ prissy feet didn’t need to be chilled by the scary stone floor in the mornings. Violetta, of course, had been dragged along the whole time, carrying screwdrivers and fifty-pronged pliers and whatever, and periodically being tasked with touching things to see how hot they were. That was how she knew Mechanicsburg was weird. She didn’t have a clue what His Royal Whingeing Bossiness had done, but she was pretty sure Mechanicsburg didn’t have it—and didn’t have enough of anything else, either. The Hospital had its own generator, sure, a great, clanking behemoth the size of a small elephant, and there were lightning rods all over town—but it didn’t actually thunderstorm much, for all the sparky reputation. No Heterodynes, Violetta guessed.

She popped out of a manhole cover near City Hall, where no actual governing seemed to happen, and more importantly near her apartment. The rooftops were just a half-second climb away. They, at least, were wreathed in shadow—the sky was lit by nothing but a sliver of the moon. No Heterodynes, no thunderstorms, no real generators…yet everything still ran like a Corbettite schedule. The lamps around City Hall shone softly at her feet, the strobe lights around the Hospital whirled in the distance, and across Bloodsweep Park, something exploded on Little Monster Island. There must be _something_ powering it all, and she was willing to bet it was the river. An underground waterwheel or something. It could be a real target for sabotage, if only she could find it.

Not that anyone would bother to attack Mechanicsburg. And if they did, no one would ever send Violetta on such a mission.

Or maybe the Dyne split off into a rivulet or two, early on—those could be valuable escape routes, in a pinch. She could sneak out of town with nobody the wiser, not even the gate guards, and go…

She didn’t have anywhere to go. She did have an assignment, and a duty, and that was to stay here and be useless.

On a lark, instead of turning down the street for her crummy little apartment, Violetta continued on to Little Monster Island. She _nearly_ even made it through the trees in the park without her stealth cloak catching on any branches. Nearly. (Grandma would have had her head for a mistake like that.)

The Dyne divided around the islet, but just north of the separation, it emerged for the first time from beneath the ground. It disappeared again a few blocks later—Mechanicsburg was built of layers, and the Dyne was no different—but this was the highest place, between Castle Heterodyne and city, that it rose. If there was a waterwheel powering the whole town, it had to be huge, meant it needed a lot of space and was probably somewhere high, to let everything flow from it easier. Violetta zoned out as much as possible in science lessons, but she was pretty sure that meant it had to be somewhere near the Castle itself.

She did have a mask for breathing underwater, which would last up to forty-five minutes. It would be difficult to go up-river, particularly underground, and freezing cold. But the Dyne was surprisingly tepid for a mountain river (another reason there was probably _something_ blocking it, somewhere high up. If she clung to the tunnel walls, she could climb.

As she folded the mask out of her seventh leg pocket, though, someone tapped her shoulder. Violetta stifled a very un-Smoke Knight-like yelp, though her spin was decent enough form.

“Are you lost, miss?”

It was a man from the city guard, thirtyish, still young in the face but going grey at the temples. He was wearing leather armor rather than plate, but he was tall and big-footed, and she couldn’t _believe_ he’d snuck up on her. She re-sheathed her dagger (he silver one with the red scorpion venom) as quickly and invisibly as possible.

“No. I mean, ye- no.” God, she was even wearing her stealth cloak, and he’d _still_ seen her. No wonder even Tarvek, who had the self-preservation sense of a lemming, didn’t want her guarding his back. “No, I just just…looking…”

The guard smiled sympathetically. At least thinking she was a harmless idiot was better than thinking she was suspicious? But she wasn’t trying to be an idiot, either.

“Tourist?” he prompted.

Violetta pulled herself to her full height, which came up to about the top of the guard’s collarbone. She had taken classes in this, damn it. The best way to survive any social indiscretion or espionagical activity was to act as though you had every right to be there in the first place.

“Actually, I work for Burgmeister Zukon. Lady Vilyenka Nabokov, sir. Junior Secretary to the Burgmeister. I was inspecting the river.” In the style of her more annoying cousins, she extended one hand for him to shake, but in a manner that suggested he might kiss it instead. Lady Vilyenka was the granddaughter of a Russian former-Count.

He shook it. “Nice to meet you.” Then his face twisted in something like recognition. “Oh, the new girl! I heard about you.”

“What?”

“Just that you’re new, really.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tic. Violetta tried not to show her own nerves. It was a small city in which not much happened anymore. It probably _was_ news that he Burgmeister had a new secretary, and from out of town at that.

“Um.” The guard re-found his footing, straightening his posture into something more official again. “You shouldn’t go too near the river, though, miss. It’s pretty, but it’s got all sort of spark poison and stuff.”

It almost wasn’t worth berating herself, how obvious that was. Especially if it came from somewhere around the Castle. Violetta just barely restrained herself from smacking her forehead.

“Thank you,” she said instead. “I’ll just…”

She made a flicker of movement to the right, just enough to catch his mind, and disappeared into the shadows to the left instead. Not the best escape and definitely not the best maintenance of cover identity, but the alternative was that she was going to die of embarrassment and that would be really suspicious, not to mention even more embarrassing. What would they think back home... So back to her apartment instead, to lie in bed and contemplate how utterly graceless the whole evening was.

It would be more comfortable than the sewers, at least. Those things were almost as maze-like as Sturmhalten’s.

\- - - - -

One thing Violetta could vouch for Mechanicsburg on: every one of its people agreed that life would be more interesting, exciting, generally _enjoyable_ if it was 20 years ago, or better yet, 200. Little did they know, of course, that there would be a new Storm King soon enough, but Violetta was glad she didn’t have to be the one to break the news that he was a slimy, sniveling weasel with just enough initiative to be an asshole (not nearly enough to stand up to the feuding families of Europa or bring them to heel, like the original Valois had done.) Anyone would be better. Anevka would be better. Uncle Leopold’s pet marmot would be better. A hunchback construct, a literal rock, Tweedle—

Okay, maybe not Tweedle. She’d still take the wimpy, whiny, weasel asshole over the brutish, overbearing, 100% Grade-A old-fashioned _ass_.

Andronicus Valois, the stories said, had been better. Noble, kind, and brave, a helping hand and a place for everyone, from the cleverest spark and greatest lord to the lowliest drummer boy. Or, perhaps, the slowest, least sneaky Smoke Knight, for all the useless noble blood in her veins. In his time, a placement in Mechanicsburg would have been the height of skill and recognition, and danger—the deepest of enemy territory, the most isolationist of infiltration points, the most monstrous of tormenters, should the unfortunate Knight be caught.

“Vilyenka?”

Violetta jumped to her feet. That is, Lady Vilyenka Nobokov jumped to her feet. Granddaughter of a Count ousted by sparks and now living with title but no land in a chateau in Paris, Vilyenka was well-connected enough to get this job on nepotism rather than merit but not affiliated with any particular political faction. Even she was bored with census reports, and dropped the file she’d been holding like it was a mortar-stone. Finally, something to _do_.

“Sir?”

Burgmeister Zuken peered at her genially through his reading glasses. He sat behind a fine wooden desk, its legs carved to resemble the claws of terrible monsters, in front of a bookcase full of impressively thick tomes and a bay window that looked out over the busy hospital district. The Castle loomed in the far left corner of the view. The office was well-suited to his tastes—warm, a little over-rich; but still he looked like he would be more at home behind the counter of a bakery, or in an armchair with some young child on his knee.

“Mark Carson off my schedule for tea this evening, would you?” he asked. “I forgot, I have to attend my daughter’s piano recital at six.” And he went back to his newspaper.

Well, that seemed like a flimsy excuse—he should have known about the recital weeks ago. But Violetta wasn’t going to hold it against the man. She wished things could be more interesting around here, but Carson Heliotrope and his Retirees’ Committee for the Preservation of Fine Mechanic Tradition were like all her crotchetiest relations condensed into one Ultimate Annoying Old Person, and then cloned half a dozen times to form the full Committee. With Easter coming, they were being even worse than usual.

She frowned, however. “I’m sorry, sir?” She spoke Romanian with her grandfather’s Russian accent. The best lies were partial truths.

“You’re keeping my schedule now, aren’t you?” He peered at her harder this time, over the glasses. “The new chit—young lady. Junior Secretary.”

Sure, sure, nobody needed to remember Violetta, or give her the time of day, even though she’d been here for nearly three months now. Even the guy she was working for (wouldn’t be the first time.) It just meant she was doing her job well.

“You aren’t scheduled to have tea with Herr Heliotrope this evening,” she said, with certainty because keeping that Schedule was pretty much her only job.

“I’m not?” The Burgmeister blinked in surprise. “I thought—”

Odyssea bustled in, the Senior Secretary, a slightly fussy brunette about ten years Violetta’s senior. She was too thin and personally efficient to be commonly associated with the word “bustle” but managed, through harriedness and the habit of carrying a stack of shuffling papers wherever she went, to pull it off nonetheless.

“Burgmeister! Sorry to interrupt, but I need you to sign these papers immediately, so we can get them to the notary and back to the construction office before they close. For the repairs to the cathedral, you know. And then there’s a report about the cheese-dressers you really need to read, so you can discuss it with Frau Rathburn tomorrow. Then you should really get ready for your lunch with the steelworkers, because traffic is backed up around Epicenter Square again, so we’ll have to leave early.”

“Oh, thank you, Odyssea.” He waved his hand at his desk, emptier than either of his secretaries’. “You can leave the report here. I suppose I’ll…”

He pulled out his pocket watch and wrinkled his nose at the time. “The traffic isn’t related to the cheese again, is it?”

“Just the usual tourist stuff,” she assured him. She dropped the report on the desk and caught Violetta by the arm as she headed out the door, pulling her back to the outer office.

“Hey, I’m abusing my powers as Senior Secretary to delegate you to note-taking with Rathburn tomorrow.”

Vilyenka was supposed to be too polite and genteel to wrinkle her nose in disgust, but acting was another thing Violetta wasn’t good at.

“Ugh. She always tries to give me whey.”

“That’s why I said ‘abusing my powers.’” Odyssea offered her an apologetic smile and shooed her back to her desk. “Sorry!”

“Wait!” The only thing waiting on her desk was the endless pile of census files she was compiling into a more efficient list, the Junior Secretary’s main task other than the schedule. This was the _worst job_.

“Does the Burgmeister have a thing with the Committee of Obnoxious Old—uh, the Retirees’ Committee for the Preservation of Fine Mechanic…”

Now it was Odyssea’s turn to wrinkle her nose. “I’ll handle them, Vivi. In return for you picking up the sewer thing.” She patted Violetta on the shoulder, in a way that nudged her back towards her desk. “And the census stuff! You’re being a huge help with that, by the way. Thank god we finally hired someone else.”

Violetta sat with a disgruntled sigh. Vilyenka would do that, too. The stacks of records on her desk were nearly taller than the desk itself. Admittedly, it was a short desk, suited to Violetta’s own height, but…

It was weird that there was something she didn’t know about on the all-mighty Schedule (pinned to the wall beside her desk, beside a tiny window that also, admittedly, looked out on the hospital district and its cheerful whitewash and neat modern architecture. Everyone in Sturmhalten would have scorned the aesthetic utterly. It wasn’t all a bad job.) It was less weird that there was something she didn’t know about _not_ on the schedule, even if Zukon did know about it and thought it should be. He reminded her more of Uncle Tick-tock than any actually “useful” member of her family. The Obnoxious Retirees could easily have sprung him in the market or something and invited themselves to tea to complain about the young folk these days, and he’d assumed it went on the Schedule because everything did, because normally his secretaries were at least somewhat involved in the planning process.

But maybe there was more to it. Maybe there was a conspiracy, a loophole in the boredom and disgrace, a secret that only a great and skilled Smoke Knight could uncover. Violetta could alchemize gold out of this shit posting and rub it in her family’s faces, show them all…

She kneaded her forehead. She was starting to sound like a spark. Mechanicsburg was _literally_ driving her crazy.

She picked up the last census folder she’d been going through. Cuthbert, Anne to Darrii, Darrius, 1872. Going backwards from the present day, through records dating back to the late 1000s. One thing you could say for Heterodynes: they kept good notes on their subjects.

\- - - - -

“What’s so good about this café, anyway?”

Odyssea tugged Violetta gently by the arm, as she had been doing almost since they left the office for lunch. “Oh, the coffee is superb. They have the best machine in town.”

“But all the way _across_ town?” April showers brought not so much May flowers as piles of mud and solidified smokestack soot at every corner, and Violetta’s dainty, flower-patterned summer skirt, that she _loved_ , was rapidly becoming ruined.

“Trust me, it’s worth the walk.” Through sorcery Violetta obviously needed to ask her about, Odyssea’s dress was somehow still immaculate white.

The café wasn’t particularly impressive. Faded blue awning, a couple mismatched tables and chairs out front—it didn’t even have a name. The window literally said _Café_ , in that overly elegant script people used when they wanted to seem French. The inside was busy, though, and Violetta had to admit: it smelled wonderful. Most coffee shops did, but this place clearly had some quality.

Odyssea glanced around and made an exclamation of surprise that even Violetta could tell was fake. Violetta followed her to a booth in the back anyway, where a young man with bleached-blond hair on top sat bent over a spread of notes. He shuffled them hurriedly together when the women approached.

“Hello?”

“Van! I totally didn’t expect to see you here.”

Odyssea was well-meaning (though about what, at the moment, Violetta wasn’t sure) but she couldn’t lie worth beans. She was painfully too bright and brittle. Apparently unaware, she ploughed on.

“Have you met Vivi? I don’t think so.” She tugged Violetta another step forward. “This is Vilyenka, our not-really-new-anymore junior secretary. Vivi, this is Van. Vanamonde. He’s a friend.”

Her voice squeaked on ‘friend’, and Violetta wanted to wince. Was this an awkward crush thing? Odyssea had never struck her as the type.

Odyssea glanced over her shoulder like she’d heard something. “Oh, Rinja’s here. I need to ask her a quick question. Vivi, why don’t you sit and order something, and I’ll be back in a moment? Ask Van for a coffee recommendation, or actually, don’t.” And she pushed Violetta onto the bench across the table from Vanamonde, and dashed off towards a light-haired waitress.

Even by Violetta’s standards, that was a pretty abysmal performance. Still, Odyssea was a pretty good boss—and seemed to keep at least half the city running on her own—and Violetta had never played wingwoman for someone who wasn’t a family member or another Knight. So maybe she ought to put some effort in.

She studied Vanamonde across the table. Decent build—a bit skinny for her taste, and his clothing was too nice for the casual Café. He sat like someone who thought he knew everything, and a glance at his notes confirmed it—pages of scribbles, clearly his own, on the history of caffeine. What sort of person wrote that? Violetta had _considerable_ experience with pretentious, foppish nerds, and she wasn’t impressed. He was judging her, too, which brought down his score even more.

Van steepled his fingers over his notes. “So, Vivi—Vilyenka? Do you have a preference?”

Violetta shrugged. It was weird hearing a nickname that could go with her actual name but never had, but neither of them was really her.

“Whichever,” she said, in her accented Romanian. “Are you Van, or Vanamonde?”

“The latter, if you please,” he said with a regal little nod. Yep, definitely an asshole.

He flagged down a waitress and ordered a refill of his mug, and, without asking, a double macchiato for Violetta. It was a drink she liked, but the principle of his presumption pissed her off, and she vowed to dislike the drink.

“And how are you enjoying Mechanicsburg?”

Vilyenka wouldn’t scowl so much at someone else ordering her coffee. Violetta tamped it down.

“Better now that the weather is improving,” she admitted. “It’s a sleepy town, but compared to the highlands…”

Vanamonde looked like she had kicked his pet midmoth, on its birthday. “Mechanicsburg is not sleepy! We’re the sixth most popular tourist destination in all Europa, ahead of the Danish Tropical Reef, and _the_ prominent exporter of snails and snail-related—”

Violetta disguised a snicker as a polite cough. People did have a lot of pride here, for what little things they had. She knew a madboy rant when she saw one coming, even when it wasn’t from an actual madboy.

“That sounds fascinating,” she said, only a little sarcastically. “I tried the snail gelato at the ice cream parlour in Bloodsweep Park. It was…interesting.”

Maybe he caught her tone, or her not-quite-disguised twist of disgust. She didn’t actually mind escargot, but it didn’t really _work_ as gelato.

“Of course, you’ve spent time in Paris, haven’t you?” He gave as good as he got in the thinly-veiled sarcasm, at least. “I’m sure their escargot puts our provincial delicacies to shame.”

Violetta preformed a polite noblewoman’s sniff. “They are both fine.”

“You have family there?”

“Just my grandfather,” she lied smoothly. “But I grew up a great deal in his household, so, yes. And you?”

A cup of coffee appeared at his elbow just in time for him to toast her with an edge of a proud smirk. “Born and bred. I hope, aside from the gelato, you’re enjoying our city?”

“It’s been very welcoming,” Violetta said, and sipped her own drink. Unfortunately for her plans to dislike it, it tasted like milk and fire and _really_ good coffee. If only Odyssea would get back, so Violetta could tell her and this painful small talk could transition into…slightly different painful small talk, probably.

“Have you picked up any interesting hobbies? Gone sight-seeing?”

Surveying the terrain in case she needed to flee, lying on her bed and throwing knives at a picture of her would-be-king’s face. “No, work has kept me mostly busy.”

“A pity. There are so many interesting things to see—the Science Museum, the Monsters’ Carnivale, the Lovers’ Walk—the skeletons up there are hundreds of years old, you know.”

He gave what was probably supposed to be a charming smile, and several things clicked in Violetta’s mind at once. One, Odyssea had been gone a _long_ time if she just needed to ask a quick question—and, at a stealthy glance, she seemed deep in conversation with the waitress, except that every so often her eyes darted back towards Violetta. But with no intention of coming over. Second, she had been weirdly insistent not just that Violetta come with her to lunch, but that they go to a coffee place Violetta had never heard of (for all that it was pretty good), then all but abandoned her.

And third, this small talk was _alarmingly_ like the awkward chitchat of every go-nowhere first date she’d ever been on. (Never been on a second.) (Definitely not with someone who dressed like Tarvek and was writing a book about the history of coffee.)

“Oh, gee, I just remembered. I have a…thing.” She grabbed her cup and downed it in one smooth gulp, the coffee scorching but the caffeine as good as a Movit shot for getting her moving. At normal human speeds. She wanted something interesting to happen, but not like this. “A thing at the office. Bye!”

“Wait—bye?” Vanamonde called uncertainly after her. She was already out the door.

A whisper of white appeared in the corner of his vision, as his co-conspirator returned to the table.

“Wow, what did you say to her?”

“I’m honestly not sure.” He took another sip of coffee (nutmeg and honeysuckle in a dark roast) to hide how disgruntled he was at the fact.

“So?”

Mechanicsburg’s main governing body leaned back in his seat, nursed his cup and considered the departed Smoke Knight. “You’re right, she seems harmless. And her presence keeps Sturmhalten happy, which we always need. But keep an eye on her. It always pays to be wary of spies.”

**Author's Note:**

> Did I name the unknown woman in white with a double-reacharound pun on Nobody? Maybe.


End file.
